The summer before my freshman year, I spent more time away from home than I did at either of my parents’ houses. Honestly, this was a good thing. I didn’t enjoy spending time at my mom’s, and as I got older, I wanted more independence and space from my dad and his strict rules. I traveled to Washington, D.C., on what was the best trip of my life, and I took two weeks to spend with my grandparents in Storm Lake and my cousin in Ames. I was nervous but insanely excited for the change that was up ahead with freshman year. I had a great friend group that got together whenever we could. It gave me so much hope that freshman year was going to be a good one.

 

But, while I was away, something terrible happened. My sister found a cat, a tiny black kitten, at the gas station in Welton, about a mile down the gravel road from my mom's house. I was 100% against having a cat. I knew how gross they could be, how much they smell, how nasty litter boxes were, and to be quite frank, I was angry at my dad for caving and letting her bring it home. I knew it was official when my dad started asking for names in the family group chat. He decided on Vito while simultaneously shooting down every single one of my sister's and my ideas.

 

Mid-July, I came home from a week at my cousin’s in Ames, homesick, and most notably motion sick from sitting in the back of a hot minivan for the past three hours. And there he was. The little black cat, already tearing up our cheap Ashley Homestore clearance couch.

 

Immediately, this cat was causing chaos, knocking over anything on a hard surface, pooping in my room, and digging all of his food out of his bowl for us to step on in the middle of the night. The worst part was the scratching. I’m usually not a sentimental person, but when it comes to things from my childhood, I'm protective. I was furious when he clawed at the pleather ottoman that somehow ended up with us after the move, instead of with my ex-stepmom. And I was so angry I almost kicked him when he started scratching at that $300 couch we got when we could finally afford to stop sitting in lawn chairs. Nothing he ruined was expensive, but it was everything to me.

 

Somehow, I became his favorite. He would bite me the hardest, chase me the longest, puke on my carpet, attack my feet in my sleep, and use his razor-sharp claws to climb up my bare legs. No matter how badly he treated me, he chose me. And I wasn’t gentle either. I threw him off me, chased him, spun him around on the floor, and yelled at him like I was scolding a child when he would do something bad. But he still liked me. 

 

So, I decided to try to like him back. We got him a harness and started taking him on walks, long before he decided he no longer liked the world outside the house. I even remember a time, walking through the graveyard in the hot summer sun, I let him wander just a little, letting him be adventurous, and he shot up the side of a tree. But he was still a little scaredy cat. Is a scaredy cat.

 

When I say he is a scaredy cat, I mean it in every sense of the imagination. He jumps at his own shadow or when someone opens a door, leaping four feet in the air before darting off like an arrow. I never give him too much crap for it. Before we found him, he must have been scared for his life, and that fear still lives with him.

 

In a weird way, Vito and I understood each other. We were both scared—not because anything around us was really dangerous, but because our minds had been trained to expect danger. I wasn't afraid of my own shadow or door slams, but I was afraid to be alone with people for a long time. My childhood abuse taught me that.

 

Most mornings, I wake up to the thumping sound of Vito jumping up and hitting my door handle, trying to get in, meowing louder than a lion's roar, demanding his breakfast. I never get too annoyed. He grew up hungry before we found him; that's something I understand deeply. When I was younger, I wasn’t fed like a kid should be, or at all. I was starved enough that, like Vito, my brain coding was rewritten to be protective of food and eat everything when it's in front of me.

 

Seeing someone else like me who carried fear and hunger in their mind and body helped me understand why I act the way I do. Healing really can come from unexpected places. Even a cat I never wanted, who wreaked havoc on my life (and still does), helped me understand myself in ways I never could have figured out alone.